6 ms·
Ask HN: What old or outdated software have you never found a replacement for?
- torunar 1y agoX11
- aleksjess 1y agoGood question. There's a ton of libraries that do what I want to do, but not updated anymore.
- webdevver 1y agobluetooth
- kahlonel 1y agoFlash
- dogman1050 1y agoWinamp with the classic skin. Old but not outdated.
- markus_zhang 1y agoReminds me of a Terminator Genesys quote: Old, not obsolete.
- Metalnem 1y agoClickRepair (https://archive.clickrepair.org/software_info/clickrepair.html https://archive.clickrepair.org/software_info/clickrepair.ht...)
- selfmodruntime 1y agoAnything that lets me manipulate the volume of different apps on MacOS feels outdated or doesn't work properly.
- lproven 1y agoOutliners, in general. The single most powerful tool available for a long-form writer (in any (human) language.) Equally useful for fact, fiction, academia, documentation, anything. Technologically simple, was done well on MS-DOS in a few hundred kB of code and data. Maps very well onto HTML, XML, etc. As such, maps onto AsciiDoc etc. But forgotten. Almost no modern versions and what exist are almost unbelievably primitive, far far below the capabilities of the mid-1980s -- for example, Emacs OrgMode or LogSeq. Almost too braindead to use. I keep copies of 20-30Y old MS Word binaries around on my 64-bit Linux boxes, just for this.
- AstroJetson 1y agoCan you say more about outlines in older versions of word? I use Word2019 (local install) and it works for me. What am I missing?
- lproven 1y agoIf you are happy with the ribbon UI, then you are fine. Personally, I can't stand it. So I use either Word 97, which has everything I need and a nicely minimal UI, and uses the same file formats as Office into the 21st century, or Word 2003. Example (old) screenshot: https://imgur.com/gallery/word-97-word-2003-under-wine-on-ubuntu-AgKGOuS https://imgur.com/gallery/word-97-word-2003-under-wine-on-ub... Note that in 97 I've turned off everything. No ribbon, no ruler, no toolbars, just menus and scroll bars, and I normally turn off the horizontal scrollbar too. In Word 2003 I've left some of the clutter turned on so you can see the difference: the ruler and one toolbar. Word 97 can't handle big portrait screens, for instance.
- dialup_sounds 1y agoSecond! Outliners are a very underserved space, eclipsed by overwrought note apps that treat outlining as formatting rather than a fundamental tool for organizing thought and communication. Indigrid (https://innovationdilation.com/ https://innovationdilation.com/) was extremely promising but is presumed dead. Bike on Mac (https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/bike/ https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/bike/) is probably the best living example. ...and there's not much else.
- FrojoS 1y agoSkype’s international VoIP phone calls for dirt cheap.
- greatgib 1y agoTry Viber out, I'm not that fan of Viber as a messaging app but for phone calls it was great value for the price. I was looking for a solution when in Asia trying to call locally lines in Europe. I tried Skype first but the quality of phone calls was really deep shit. I was saved by Viber.
- ok1984 1y agoTotal commander
- goodthink 1y agoGraffiti
- devilbunny 1y agoI’ll see your Graffiti and raise you Swype.
- EdwardCoffin 1y agoInception the App [1], a movie tie-in app for the iPhone which played theme music from the movie selected based on your accelerometer data and the ambient sounds it could sense. [1] http://inception-app.com http://inception-app.com
- FerkiHN 1y agoOpen Office. I don't know why, but I make presentations there despite the alternatives, it's like native, without ads, subscriptions, etc. I like the primitiveness and in general I'm already used to it.
- duffyjp 1y agoHave you given Libre Office a try? I use their spreadsheet all the time. You can paste in data and actually get it into cells the way you want. Excel is terrible at this. Development Comparison: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice-vs-openoffice/ https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice-vs-openoffi...
- FerkiHN 1y agoUnfortunately, I have a Windows 8.1 PC and I downloaded the update for it from the official website, but unfortunately the installation LibreOfice failed , so I stayed with OpenOffice.
- dradra67 1y agoApple Aperture. Never liked Lightroom and it is subscription-only now. I use DarkTable here and there but never recreated all the albums and metadata I had in Aperture. Apple pulling the plug was a major punch in the gut and I'll never invest so much effort again in curating a digital collection with proprietary software.
- pulvinar 1y agoAbsolutely. I'm taking good care of the last hardware that still runs it. Wonder what it would take to convince Apple to bring it back. It's not like there's a shortage of talent and money to do this now. And it would be immensely appreciated, unlike some of their other projects.
- kingkongjaffa 1y agoCommand and conquer games, especially 3 tiberium wars, There’s really no modern equivalent of build a base, gather ore in ore trucks, make base defenses and units, and fight in formations and garrisonned in buildings
- seuraughty 1y agoHave you tried Tempest Rising?
- mococa 1y agoTurbo C with conio.h
- fat_cantor 1y agoDark Sky
- nocoiner 1y agoI cannot believe they didn’t replicate the Dark Sky functionality 1:1 in the Weather app.
- austin-cheney 1y agoI stopped maintaining one of my personal applications 6 years ago and people still use it in the browser almost 5,000 times a month and download it more than 4,000 times a month. It’s called Pretty Diff.
- browningstreet 1y agoNeat — I used to use that. Out of curiosity, why did you stop maintaining it? Have you considered giving it to someone to keep up? Apologies if this is addressed in a blog somewhere.
- austin-cheney 1y agoI stopped maintaining it because it required a stupendous amount of time. That's fine except I had mostly stopped using it myself for the last 2 or 3 years I was maintaining it and I wanted the freedom to use that time to explore other unrelated projects. Simultaneously the visibility around that project got me hired more than once, but my interest in doing JavaScript for employment was fading as well. I still write JavaScript/TypeScript in personal projects to this day, but I do completely unrelated work now for employment.
- mikewarot 1y agoPicassa - Google took it over, and left a bug in it that renders it unusable. It randomly swaps face tags, so I can't use it. 8(
- pesoneto 1y agoMacFlow by MainStay. The only flowcharting software with an intuitive user interface. Only works on original Mac OS. Don't try it, you will never be happy current products ever again.
- lobsterthief 1y agoHave you tried Whimsical? It’s the only one that’s ever made sense to me. It’s web-based though.
- duffyjp 1y agoImage Composite Editor. It's a panorama maker from Microsoft Research. I'm a hobbyist photographer and nothing I've tried can come close. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/image-composite-editor/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/image-compo...
- alok-g 1y agoHave you tried Serif Panaroma Plus? It's an outdated product, but worked the best for me, better than ICE as far as I recall.
- mmh0000 1y agoMy software of choice for this has always been Autopano Giga, still "outdated", but does its job very well: https://hdrmaps.com/blog/autopano-giga-is-now-free/ https://hdrmaps.com/blog/autopano-giga-is-now-free/
- alok-g 1y agoWinSplit Revolution. It's a minimalistic but powerful Window manager for Windows. Some forks exist but all seem stalled. https://github.com/dozius/winsplit-revolution https://github.com/dozius/winsplit-revolution There are many alternatives, but none as good. WinSplit used to work fine until a few years back. Microsoft Money. I moved to GNUCash, but still miss Money. Winamp, as another comment here noted, cannot be considered outdated. I have tried many alternatives but find none to be as good. Sonique was a good alternative which stalled a long time back. Thankfully Winamp still works.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bjourne 1y agoLogisim Evolution. And I'm telling you, whoever can make a replacement addressing all its pain points, while being easy to use for students and grading teachers can become very very rich.
- Rotundo 1y agoXFig
- burnt-resistor 1y agoA Bodega Mac app, for a defunct app store, that checks every Sparkle framework enabled app for updates and can optionally install them. It's x86 only so it won't work whenever Apple decides in its infinite wisdom to break everyone's investment in x86 software when Rosetta 2 is purposefully obliterated.
- emseetech 1y agoGoogle Wave. One of the best "collaborative thinking" tools ever. It would even integrate well with LLMs.
- animesh 1y agoBeyond Compare. There is nothing like it, even on Linux. I use WinMerge on Windows and vscode on Linux, but Beyond Compare was something else.
- mikewarot 1y agoNapster was amazing. There's never been anything to help me discover and then buy new music faster since.
- palata 1y agoIRC.
- adrianwaj 1y agoTextpipe Pro because it's so far never made it over to Linux. Smartdraw too.. Dia isn't quite as good. Question could be rephrased to mean Windows software.
- kypro 1y agoI use Audacity a lot and it hasn't really changed much over the last 2 decades I've been using it. It's probably the oldest piece of software I still use at least weekly. It's simple and just works, plus I can use on my Mac, Linux and Windows machines. The other is probably VLC, but I'm not really sure if that's what you're after since it's just a media player.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]